News
Newsletter for the week ending Friday 30th September
Such a lovely week, ending with Year 2 excitedly telling me today all they learnt about bees from their trip out yesterday!
Lots of information about forthcoming events and dates for the diary, including the return of our Halloween Disco and our harvest festivals, so please do click ‘more’ to find out all about these events and other.
Wishing you all a super weekend.
From Jeremy Cooper and all the children and staff
Rehearsals are drawing to a close now for all our harvest celebrations and please see below for dates and times. For the service in St Mary’ s church the children have worked hard and are looking forward to visiting the church next week. Thank you for all your help with learning the words. Any last minute word learning will help the children feel confident for the performance. Minimum costume requirements have now been sent out so if they could be sent into school Monday that would be greatly appreciated. We look forward to seeing you at St. Mary’s if you are able to join us.
Tickets for the Halloween Disco on Friday 21st October are soon to go on sale. Tickets are £2.50 each, cash only, available for sale on Mondays and Fridays at drop off and pick up times, starting Monday 3rd October. Someone will be based in the main entrance or playground, depending on the weather.Times for the disco are 5pm-6pm for Dolphins – Year 2 (parent/guardians must stay) and 6.30pm – 7.30pm for Years 3-6. Ticket price includes a drink and snack, there will be sweets and glow sticks available to purchase and there are prizes for best dressed!
Harvest Festival dates are as follows:
- Years 3-6 Wednesday 5th October, 2.15pm at St Mary’s Church, Appledore. Parents and guardians are welcome.
- Years 1&2 Friday 14th October, 2.30pm in school hall and back to classrooms to see their workbooks.
- Turtles & Dolphins Tuesday 18th October, 2.30pm in school hall and back to the foundation stage unit to share learning journeys.
- For all of the above parents can take their children after and also their siblings. Nearer the time we will provide details about how we as a school community support a local homeless charity at this time.
Sports Day
- Sports Day for Dolphins and years 1-6 is scheduled for Tuesday 23rd May. Save the date and fingers crossed for the weather! More details to follow much nearer the time.
AROUND AND ABOUT THE VILLAGE
FA WILDCATS football session in Bideford for girls only aged 5 – 12 years runs on a Saturday morning. For more information please click here.
AROUND THE CLASSES
In Turtles and Dolphins this week we have started to learn about a second book by Julia Donaldson ‘Zog’. On Tuesday we looked at just the first page and thought about what Zog might be taught at Dragon School. On Wednesday we looked at the second page and thought about what Zog might do to receive a gold star. We have made dragon puppets and painted pictures of Zog. Today we walked down to Appledore Library to change our library books.
In Sea Lions this week we have been writing letters to nursery rhyme characters in the style of our Dear Mother Goose book. We have been thinking about what makes a good sentence and even had a go at making them funny. In Maths we have been learning greater than, less than and equal to and have compared objects and numbers. We have started learning our Harvest Festival songs and enjoyed singing these with Year 2. Please can Year 1 have any puzzles you no longer use?
The highlight of our week in year 2 was our trip to the Honey Farm. Everyone had a great time and had a good mix of learning, exploring and playing! We learnt lots about bees but also asked great questions demonstrating how much we have already learnt about bees. We also had fun on Tuesday for our Outdoor Learning session exploring the outdoor areas by playing a biosphere game, thinking about animals that live in the ‘jungle’ and making pictures with natural materials. In Maths we have been working out where numbers would go on a number line and comparing objects using the greater than, less than and equal symbols. In English we have been inventing our new Traction Man adventures by acting them out and then writing the adventure in our books. We have also done our first Spelling Test, children should have brought their spelling books home to show you how well they have done. The spellings for the test next week will be added to Google Classroom on Friday afternoon.
Year 3 have had another busy week! We carried on our learning about light in science and we designed our own experiment to prove whether ‘materials reflect light in different ways’ was true or false. We designed a fair test where we shone light on to different materials and observed how much light was reflected off. In English, we used descriptive language to describe a stormy scene and challenged ourselves to use powerful adjectives, verbs and adverbs to make our writing really exciting. We then wrote a postcard as though we were the polar bear from the story to describe the adventure that we had been on. In maths, we carried out an investigation to determine whether we have to look at the highest place value column when comparing 3-digit numbers.
This week in HMS Echo, we have been busy writing our postcards home from a dream destination. I have been very impressed with their use of informal language, use of apostrophes and the present perfect tense. Some have been written very comically! We are looking forward to publishing these next week. In Geography, we have been sorting rubbish into the correct recycling bins and exploring the importance of doing this for our environment – it’s been interesting to hear how they organise their own rubbish at home. For Science, we looked at bottles of fizzy drink and learnt about carbon dioxide inside fizzy drinks to give it that ‘peculiar sensation’ as Joseph Priestly in 1767 once said! In PSHE, we have been looking at the word ‘duties’ and what this means, particularly exploring the duties of doctors, police officers, teachers and other occupations that keep us safe. The children are also going to be looking into what their duties are as children.
Beechcroft have worked really hard this week drafting their new story based on the Tear Thief. They have secured their understanding on the need to plan and edit their work to make it a great story. These will be published over the coming week and put on display on the writing wall in the main building. We have continued to work on subtraction in maths and looking at strategies to check the answers, this has included using ’rounding’. The ‘bumblebee’ song sounds good for next week’s Harvest Festival; remember to bring in your clothes for next Tuesday (dungarees/jeans and a check/plain shirt). We have continued with our work on plastic, looking at the history of how it was invented and the changes the world needs to make going forward. To check our knowledge we have played Kahoot for both our geography and science subjects. Please check you have seen the residential kit list and informed the school on any medical/dietary requirements.
Year 6 have been learning about classification in science and the Linnaean system. In Literacy, they have written about the atmosphere and the greenhouse effect and are now planning a final write about climate change linked to our topic. Maths has been all about place value including powers of 10 and placing numbers on a numberline. They have become great at the PE starter game ‘All Change’ and will now learn skills in small sided games. They have also been working hard on extending responses to reading our class text ‘Skellig’. For homework, this week, they may need help with a few responses on an online carbon footprint calculator – it will be interesting what data is created from this.
